Dr. Amin Khan,

Please may I respectfully point out some of the flaws from the conclusion that you reached by the experiment you performed.

1) Your Online Booking system, to my knowledge, is subject to frequent minor upgrades/changes. I was not aware of when David.chai made his bookings, but I also know a few weeks ago I received an e-mail from MAS notifying me of "Reservations Systems Upgrade", which I suspect is a major upgrade. The scientific notion that you change only one variable when you perform an experiment, in my opinion, is not adhered to in your experiment.

2a) It is unsafe to extrapolate one result from your experiment and expect it to be applied to 'all cases'. In my post previously in this thread, I mentioned about your competitor Singapore Airlines' Online Redemption Booking fault, where despite a promised 25% discount, only 15% was applied. Their staff in Singapore Airlines never heard of such complaints before (neither do I see any such complaints posted in Flyertalk or SQTalk), but when they went through the same steps with me, they found the same problem themselves.

2b) You mentioned "we have not received any complaints of this nature." Further to point 2a) above, I wonder could it be also a result of the culture in your organization. Due to my numerous unhappy dealings with your airline in the past, I do wonder, could there again be cases where your junior staff refuses to escalate complaints further up - or complaints were made but not replied to (both from 'complaints' made here in Flyertalk and also personal chat with friends who flew with MH)?


And furthermore, I wonder have you considered David.Chai's motives behind booking 3 names for himself? Is it for a profit motive? Or something else? Honestly I cannot think of a plausible explanation, if Mr. Chai did indeed purposefully made the whole story up.


To be honest, may I respectfully suggest to Dr. Amin Khan here that whether it is Malaysia Airlines' fault or David.chai's fault, it is hard to come to a conclusion. I doubt you will possibly 'reinstall' your old system, at the time/date when David.Chai made his booking, to come to a firm conclusion.

Why not offer a goodwill gesture to him and waive the MYR65 change fee without admitting any liability, to foster some goodwill between Mr. Chai and your airline?

Whilst there are Small Claims Tribunals in Malaysia that Mr. Chai can go through, I do feel sorry if he has to go through that, as MYR195 is, in a way, not a huge amount to spend that much time to pursue about, especially if Mr. Chai is a working professional. But I also fear that as a result of the small sum involved and because of the bureaucracies that are involved, he will be deprive himself of the justice that he , I believe, deserves.